Proper Elocution
by cruisedirector
Summary: Drabble sequences based on The King's Speech, reflecting different times in the characters' lives, some outside the film's era. Most were written for prompts at kings speeches. Gen, but the final line was suggested by Colin "We Should Have Kissed" Firth.
1. Endearments

**Endearments**

[]

David is as careless with personal correspondence as he is with state papers. Bertie blushes when his gaze falls on the letters spread out for all to see.

"My sweetheart," they begin. Edward VIII calls himself a boy; he calls Mrs Simpson and himself WE. He invents endearments. He signs the letters "more & more & more," sometimes following "I love you," sometimes leaving it understood.

The notes sound pathetic for a man, let alone a king. Yet when Bertie thinks of the restrained letters he has exchanged with Elizabeth, even after their wedding, he can't help envying his brother.

[]

"It isn't just fear of stammering," he tries to explain to Logue, later, having escaped from David's noisy weekend party. "Even when I write, I find that there are things I can't express."

"Do you mean politics or social conventions?" Always Lionel assumes that official duties are Bertie's only concern, unless Bertie tells him otherwise.

"I mean affection." The word comes out sounding cross. Anger is one feeling that Bertie has never had trouble expressing. "Can't say those words."

Logue's eyebrows shoot up. "Such as?"

"'Sweetheart,'" Bertie tries to say. He doesn't stammer, but the word sticks on his tongue.

[]

"Say them to your daughters," Lionel had suggested, but now that Bertie is conscious of trying, he can't force the words to come. His own mother never called him _darling_.

Now that Lilibet is older, she resists her nickname, wanting to be called after her mother and the famous queen. And Margaret talks so quickly that he can't slip in his adoration.

"Love," he calls Elizabeth one afternoon. She shoots him a look, reminding him that his equerry and secretary are just outside. Even among friends, she refers to him as "The Duke."

Bertie would prefer a bit less propriety.

[]

"Pretend it's the F word." Lionel grins. "Say it as though you aren't supposed to say it."

"Darling," Bertie spits at him. "Dear one."

"Beaut," chuckles Lionel.

"B-beloved." Bertie can't muster the anger to say it to Lionel like a profanity. He thinks _Sweetheart_, but, because Lionel keeps grinning, says "Bugger!" instead.

Lionel only smiles more. "Very good, love," he says, as easily as if he were speaking to a sweetheart. Perhaps it's not just for encouragement.

Bertie wonders, again, how it would feel to have the gift over and over, like a parent to a child. Like true love.


	2. Rewards

**Rewards**

[]

He may be next in line to the throne of England, but Bertie is also a sad boy gazing at a model that Lionel won't let him finish until he sings. Until, not unless; Lionel doesn't doubt that Bertie is going to give in.

Perhaps Lionel should be kinder. Bertie just lost his father. But it won't take long for him to sing. He can't wait to get his hands on the little plane, and Lionel wants him to, not just for Bertie's sake. Lionel has been waiting for such an opportunity to observe Bertie's fine motor skills up close.

[]

_The grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men..._

As often happens when Lionel recalls Bertie's title, the nursery rhyme creeps into his thoughts. He must be careful lest he should start to hum it in the office. At home, he's less vigilant.

"Are you using that as an exercise with your pupils?" asks Myrtle. "'And when they were up, they were up, and when they were down, they were down.'" She acts out the words, standing and sitting. "Like you do with Jack and Jill."

"You're brilliant, sweetheart," he says, walking over to give her a kiss.

[]

"Here's your shilling." Bertie sets it down as if he can't risk touching Lionel to put it in his hand. Lionel is too surprised at first to thank him, then doesn't want to interrupt Bertie's train of thought as Bertie accepts Lionel's apology and plunges ahead.

Where did the shilling come from? Did Bertie think of it as he left the car, asking the driver if he had a bob? Or had the King asked someone at the Palace for some cash?

Lionel is itching to touch it, to discover whether the coin is warm from being in Bertie's pocket.

[]

Bertie seats Lionel and his wife in the royal box at the coronation, giving Myrtle the thrill of her life as she dresses in finery surpassing even her wedding gown. Lionel feels self-conscious in silk stockings and is afraid of tripping over his ceremonial sword, but one glimpse of the medal on his chest makes even his toothache diminish.

The night before the coronation, Lionel learned that he would be recognized in the Coronation Honours List for his services to the King, becoming a Member of the Victorian Order. All that Bertie seeks in return is Lionel's smile as he speaks.

[]

Lionel fears that, as King, Bertie will feel even more constrained by decorum. Yet once he has been crowned, Bertie seems more at ease with the notion that he can make the role his own, not trying to emulate his father or his brother.

"Keep everyone out," he laughs to his secretary. "I shall be rolling on the floor doing my speech exercises."

Once they are alone, Bertie orders Lionel to sing with him. When Lionel tells him to waltz, Bertie grabs him and swings him around the room.

He rarely stammers now, but Lionel doesn't point it out.

[]

"Mmmmmother." Bertie's eyes are closed, his face unusually relaxed. "Mmmother. Mother." Then his jaw tightens fractionally. "Ffffffffather. Ffffa-fa- Fuck. Ffffffffather."

"Deep breath," Lionel reminds him, touching his chest to remind him to inhale from the diaphragm. "Where is it getting caught?"

"Here." Grabbing his hand, Bertie brings it up, placing Lionel's fingers just below his jaw. Lionel's thumb brushes his throat, and Bertie's breath hitches. Unexpectedly, so does Lionel's. "It gets tight right in there."

Gently Lionel presses down with a finger, massaging the spot. "There?" he asks.

Bertie doesn't speak. His eyes have closed again, chin nodding, lips curved.

[]

It is Bertie's moment, yet Lionel has never received such friendly praise and acceptance at court, even from friends of the king and hangers-on who have made their disapproval of his origins apparent.

"Thank you, again," says the Queen when she steps back inside. "I've never seen him so pleased with himself."

"A marvelous job," Wood whispers while the BBC technicians pack away their equipment.

"Well done, old chap," mutters Grieg as he passes with Lascelles.

The loveliest welcome comes from Princess Margaret, who introduces her new tutor to Lionel. "This is Mr Logue. He is Papa's friend," she announces.

[]

Lionel witnesses the burdens firsthand. He sees how hard it is for Bertie to spend his days touring the shattered streets of London, talking to people who have lost family members, greeting returning soldiers who have given up limbs in defense of the nation. There are few, thinks Lionel, who would wish for the wealth and prestige of royalty if they understood the sacrifices that came with them.

Bertie's greatest privilege, thinks Lionel, is the ability to demand absolute privacy. When he asks to be alone, his people know better than to meddle. No speech rehearsal will ever be interrupted.

[]

"If I were someone else, would you do all this for me?" asks Bertie, rubbing his tired eyes.

"Of course I would." Lionel waits for Bertie to look up before smiling. "Most of my patients aren't royalty, you know."

"Most of your patients don't demand that you give up dinner with your family to work on speeches. Or make you drive across London during air raids. Or ruin your Christmas."

"You've never once ruined my Christmas," Lionel says firmly. "Serving you is the greatest joy of my life."

"Because I'm the king," scowls Bertie.

"That's not true." And it isn't.

[]

Bertie is in no mood to rehearse the broadcast. "I want to celebrate, like everyone else."

"But afterward there will be congratulations, and all that food." It's not easy for Lionel to cajole, though Lionel, too, has been invited to join the festivities. As happy as he is that the war has ended and his sons are safe, he feels sad. His work with the king may be coming to an end.

Bertie studies him. "You enjoy the practice more than the congratulations," he guesses. "I owe you for all you've done, Logue. We'll just have to keep at it."


	3. Shillings

**Shillings**

[]

"Come and have a look at this," says Bertie. He's holding the designs for new coins bearing his likeness. "Remember when you said that my face was next? Here it is."

Lionel is impressed with how confident Bertie looks, not only in the official profile on the shilling, but standing here proudly in what Bertie had always suggested to Lionel that he thought of as his father's place, or his brother's.

"You look very regal," Lionel tells him, and is rewarded with a wide smile.

From the doorway behind Bertie, where she stands watching, Elizabeth smiles at Lionel as well.

[]

"It's going to be difficult this month," Myrtle tells Lionel, showing him the page with the numbers. The war has sent most of Lionel's patients far from London, yet he knows that he must stay, because of the king. Even with the boys gone, it isn't easy to buy what's needed.

He looks at the projected expenses, saying, "I need a few bob for a gift."

"What gift?"

"A book." Lionel always gives Bertie a book for his birthday. He won't let the war prevent that.

"Of course," says Myrtle, lowering the amount of money allotted for paper and ink.

[]

Lionel never spends Bertie's shilling. During the worst weeks of the war, he carries it with him in his pocket, as if by protecting Bertie's coin, he can keep Bertie safe.

Later still, when he hears on the radio that the king must have an operation, he sits by the heater, warming the shilling in his hand.

He passes it on to a grandson who will treasure it as a reminder of his grandfather, yet never understand what it meant to Lionel. How could he? The face of George V is on this coin, not the king whom Lionel knew.

[]

The boy watches while his grandfather buys him a model airplane kit. He wonders why this cheerful event has made his grandfather sad.

His grandfather pays without looking at the money, trusting the shopkeeper to count it for him. It's as if the old man can't bear to see the faces on the coins.

When the shopkeeper hands over the change, it goes quickly into a pocket. A shilling slips out, drops to the floor, and rolls to the boy's feet. His grandfather sighs in relief when it lands face down.

"I don't like to give him away," he murmurs.


	4. Bereft

**Bereft**

[]

Two days before Christmas, all seems right with the kingdom.

Lionel goes to Windsor to go over the wording of the holiday broadcast, the most optimistic of Bertie's reign. "Let us hope that before next Christmas Day, the story of liberation and triumph will be complete," Bertie will tell his people. Lionel changes "calamities" to "disasters," since it would be calamitous indeed to hear the King stumble over the hard C.

Then, as they sit by the fire, Bertie shatters the peace with one sentence: "Logue, I think the time has come when I can do a broadcast by myself."

[]

Bertie doesn't mean to shock. His recent speeches have gone over exceptionally well. And Bertie feels guilty that Lionel is never home with his family for Christmas dinner, though Lionel's sons are grown, though even Myrtle knows that Lionel would just as soon be with the King.

The Queen suspects as well. She has already declared her belief that she and their daughters should sit beside the King while he speaks. If his voice is strong and confident, his subjects will credit it to the nearness of his family, not to guidance by a teacher whom Bertie has finally outgrown.

[]

To Queen Elizabeth, Lionel is all smiles. "I feel like a father who is sending his boy to his first public school," he says, chuckling as she pats him on the arm.

To his guests, Lionel appears so busy with preparations for Christmas dinner that he nearly forgets the speech. Minutes before it begins, he disappears into the bedroom to listen, then comes back, beaming, to their congratulations.

To his wife, Lionel tries to make light of his feelings. He even allows their guests to hear him afterward speaking on the telephone, joking to the King, "My job is over."

[]

Lionel will try to remember it as a happy Christmas, particularly the next year when he must face the holiday without Myrtle. The speech goes as well as Lionel or Bertie could have hoped. When, afterward, Bertie half-apologizes, telling Lionel that he wanted to get through just one on his own, it is with pride in his voice.

Lionel expresses pride as well. He does not give voice to the pain that made him listen in privacy, neglecting his guests, feeling his age.

Bertie has gone on alone before, on tour, at meetings, among royals. Yet Bertie has always returned.

[]

"I wonder if you realize how grateful I am to you for having made it possible for me to carry out this vital part of my job," Bertie writes in the new year. "I cannot thank you enough."

Lionel claims that he only ever wanted Bertie to be able to speak without stumbling, replying, "I would not be human if I were not overjoyed that you can now do these things without supervision."

It's a lie, like what he told the Queen. Yet Lionel only confesses the truth to his diary: "I felt like a father bereft of his son."


	5. Three Queens

**Three Queens**

[]

Elizabeth fidgets as Bertie introduces Lionel to Queen Mary. Being presented to Her Majesty is considered a great honor, and the Queen Mother gives Lionel a gracious greeting.

But when Lionel asks whether she enjoyed the King's Christmas broadcast, she replies, "My husband always gave very fine speeches." Bertie knows to school his features to indifference, though Lionel can't hide his surprise.

"She would never acknowledge that Bertie had trouble speaking," Elizabeth whispers to Lionel, "Royal children must be perfect. Like Bertie's poor youngest brother."

Elizabeth loves Lionel then for stepping closer to Bertie, like a wolf protecting a pup.

[]

"She'd make a fine Queen," Elizabeth says once the door to the Logue home has closed.

"Do you think so?" Apparently Bertie has been too focused on Lionel's reaction to have formed an opinion of Myrtle Logue.

"Did you see how quickly she pounced after he introduced you? 'Will Their Majesties be staying for dinner?' She hates being kept in the dark as much as I do." Elizabeth chuckles. "We should invite them to the Palace for dinner."

"I'm sure she'd like that." With the two women there, Elizabeth thinks, Bertie and Lionel both might have reason to be frightened.

[]

"I'm surprised His Majesty is so nervous," Lionel admits. "A wedding is a happy occasion, and he'll only be speaking in front of family."

"The King has to say something nice about the Hun," jokes Elizabeth. Her feelings about Lieutenant Mountbatten are hardly a secret. "To tell the truth, I think he's more worried about going to pieces when he has to give away his little girl."

Elizabeth had been concerned about summoning Lionel while he was still in mourning for Myrtle, but Lionel seems happy to help with the celebration. Now, though, he looks teary. "Deep breaths," he prescribes.


	6. Sturm und Drang

**Sturm und Drang**

[]

Bertie would watch for Lionel out the window if he could. Instead, he can see only the stony sky, dark as iron, with clouds swirling like fits of temper about to erupt.

Of course Lionel will come. Lionel has never missed a speech, not even when he's had to drive through air raids to reach the Palace.

Sometimes Bertie thinks his nerves might be calmer if he didn't have to worry about Lionel risking his life to come to him.

But Bertie walked away once. Tried to lock Lionel out of his home... his heart.

He can't do it again.

[]

Reports come in waves, like guilt.

The numbers horrify. Thousands have died, mostly on ships, serving their own Navy as Bertie did before he became a King.

It is a time for mourning, not for relief so profound that it borders on exultation.

Yet submerged beneath the sorrow, the King can see salvation for his people. Churchill sees it too. Now the Americans must join in the war. Now Roosevelt must keep his promises to Britain and her monarch.

When the United States enters the fight, Bertie will not wish it undone.

But did his own prayers bring it about?

[]

Elizabeth has been the Queen Mother for half her life, twice as long as she was married to the King. Bertie has faded to dull grey in her photographs.

He'd known that he was gravely ill for months, yet the end came suddenly, too quickly for farewells.

After Logue's wife died, though Logue was a man of science, he went to spiritualists and seances, trying to speak to Myrtle. When Bertie learned of it, he thought Lionel must have gone a bit mad.

Still, Lionel followed Myrtle - and Bertie - to heaven fairly quickly.

Would Bertie's own wife recognize him there?


	7. Soar

**Soar**

[]

"Dad, whose airplane's this?"

"Please don't touch it."

"Is it Valentine's? You wouldn't even let me get the Albatros, why does he get a Fokker?"

"It's not Valentine's. It's a gift for a patient who's been working very hard. A bit of a joke to make him smile."

"Is it for that boy you let finish my Curtiss? The one whose dad wouldn't let him build models at home? You could bring him round to our house. We could work on them together."

"That's a very nice idea, Antony. I think he'd enjoy that. I only wish it were appropriate."

[]

_God Save the King._

For years it's been the phrase that Lionel has repeated silently to himself when he's needed a moment to compose himself, to control his temper, to stop and think.

He's angry enough to catch his son smoking a cigarette. But when he tries to calm himself down before speaking, the inner recitation has the opposite effect. Suddenly he's shaking with fury.

"Dad?" asks Laurie. "Are you all right?"

"Never again," Lionel says. He isn't speaking of the cigarette, already dropped, forgotten.

It won't ever be so easy to forget Bertie, with cigarette in hand, striding away.

[]

It wouldn't rankle so much without all the reminders. The name mentioned every time one of Lionel's boys turns on the wireless. The hastily printed new portraits on the wall of every shop. The chatter of neighbors. The posters declaring "Stand By the King."

It's like being pricked by pins, always in different spots, a dozen times or more a day. Neighbors, pupils, Lionel's own family may mention the monarch. He can't guard against the sting without cutting himself off from everyone. Even fleeing back to Australia wouldn't make it stop.

He'll have to bear his pain alone. Like Bertie.

[]

Cold, dismal rain. A last-minute cancellation. A scratched phonograph record. A leak in a window, a puddle on the floor.

An empty milk bottle hides a hole in the tablecloth. The engine sputters like it needs work again. The boys are too busy, or too restless, for Shakespeare.

They're small things, easy enough to overlook, yet they weigh on Lionel like punishments.

The ring interrupts while he's with a patient. He nearly ignores it. He is not polite when answering.

"Yes? What is it?"

The name. The request. The schedule. The confirmation.

And quicker than sunrise, all fixed, all forgotten.

[]

The final rehearsal has concluded. The next morning, Lionel will be the only common colonial seated in the royal box, while Bertie will be crowned King of England.

"Wear this tomorrow." Bertie opens a drawer in his desk. From it he takes a medal of the Royal Victorian Order. The _Sunday Express_ editor had told Lionel that his name was on the Coronation Honors List, but Lionel hadn't believed it; most of the honorees are nobles.

"Thank you," he says humbly.

The King smiles. "Not at all. You have helped me. I am going to reward those who help me."

[]

Lionel bursts through the door in alarm. He hadn't thought he was late.

Bertie sits cross-legged on the rug beside Lionel's youngest son, studying a book of airplane diagrams. Behind them, Lionel's middle son slumps in a chair with his homework in his lap, mocking them for using the wrong screw on a propeller.

"Dad," Antony greets him. "Bertie says we should build a Sopwith Baby."

"Because _you're_ a baby," Valentine grouses.

"Shut up," Bertie says, elbowing Valentine in the leg. He looks perfectly content.

Valentine stalks out, muttering. "Who does he think he is, the bloody King of England?"

[]

When his family sits down to dinner, Lionel refuses to switch off the wireless. The BBC will eventually report on the King's trip to America. If Bertie has spoken in some public venue, Lionel might even get to hear his voice.

Bertie had asked Lionel to come along, but Lionel had declined, citing Bertie's need for independence. His real reason was more complicated. He feared becoming too attached to following Bertie around.

"You're moping," chides Myrtle. "He'll be back soon, and ring you up to tell you about it.

Even the boys tease. "He's not your sweetheart, is he, Dad?"

[]

It's an old fear, probably foolish now, yet rainy afternoons trigger it nonetheless. Lionel can't forget the misery that struck him that awful day at precisely the same moment as the first drops fell on his coat, when he realized that Bertie had no intention of speaking to him again.

Bertie has since apologized, of course, and welcomed Lionel warmly each time he's arrived at the Palace. But when the sky is so dark, Lionel can't escape the desolation of the memory... the cold face of Bertie's Equerry dismissing him, the finality of the steward shutting the door behind him.

[]

Bertie finds Lionel with three BBC technicians, rerouting the wires in the little room Lionel redecorated. They won't remove the equipment. Another speech, soon, will be inevitable.

"I'll finish," Lionel tells them, hiding a microphone behind a drape as they scuttle out of the King's path.

The Prime Minister has gone to plan for war. The Queen has taken the girls upstairs. The King, too, has work to do, but waits to speak to Lionel alone.

"Thank you," he says, clasping Lionel's hand.

Lionel smiles. "You've already thanked me."

"Not properly." And before Lionel can disagree, Bertie kisses his cheek.


End file.
